Dual Energy CT Impact on Determination of Chemical Composition for Urolithiasis

Abstract

Background: The urinary tract stone disease is a common problem. Dual energy CT with advanced post processing techniques gives anatomical information as size, site of the stone as well as its chemical composition which alter the clinical management.

Objective: This study was aimed at studying the role of dual energy computed tomography in characterization of renal stones.

Patients and methods: This study was carried out at the private radiology center throughout the period from January 2020 to January 2021 included 48 patients with renal stones. In this study, renal stones were more common in men (66.7 %) than in women (30.3%). The age of our selected patients ranged from 24 to 55 years with a mean of 42 years. The most affected age group was from 24-44 years (24 cases) represented 50% of the cases.

Results: The average age of the studied group was (42.1±7.6), the most common presentation symptoms was loin pain (75.0%) followed by hematuria (18.8 %) then nausea& vomiting (4.2%) and fever (2.0%).Dual energy CT had 88.9% ability to truly detect uric from non-uric acid stones with (97.9%) accuracy, (100.0%) ability to exclude non uric stones (specificity), (100.0%) predictive value positive and (97.5%) predictive value negative with (50.0%) prevalence and (35.0%) likelihood positive ratio.

Conclusion: It could be concluded that dual energy CT has been shown to be effective for characterizing chemical composition of the urinary stones, dual energy CT not well established enough to be used in clinical practice, but it will replace helical non contrast CT as the standard imaging modality for urinary calculi.